English

Inverse problems for certain subsequence sums in integers

Number Theory 2019-09-04 v1

Abstract

Let AA be a nonempty finite set of kk integers. Given a subset BB of AA, the sum of all elements of BB, denoted by s(B)s(B), is called the subset sum of BB. For a nonnegative integer α\alpha (k\leq k), let Σα(A):={s(B):BA,Bα}.\Sigma_{\alpha} (A):=\{s(B): B \subset A, |B|\geq \alpha\}. Now, let A=(a1,,a1r1 copies,a2,,a2r2 copies,,ak,,akrk copies)\mathcal{A}=(\underbrace{a_{1},\ldots,a_{1}}_{r_{1}~\text{copies}}, \underbrace{a_{2},\ldots,a_{2}}_{r_{2}~\text{copies}},\ldots, \underbrace{a_{k},\ldots,a_{k}}_{r_{k}~\text{copies}}) be a finite sequence of integers with kk distinct terms, where ri1r_{i}\geq 1 for i=1,2,,ki=1,2,\ldots,k. Given a subsequence B\mathcal{B} of A\mathcal{A}, the sum of all terms of B\mathcal{B}, denoted by s(B)s(\mathcal{B}), is called the subsequence sum of B\mathcal{B}. For 0αi=1kri0\leq \alpha \leq \sum_{i=1}^{k} r_{i}, let Σα(rˉ,A):={s(B):B is a subsequence of A of lengthα},\Sigma_{\alpha} (\bar{r},\mathcal{A}):=\left\{s(\mathcal{B}): \mathcal{B}~\text{is a subsequence of}~\mathcal{A}~\text{of length} \geq \alpha \right\}, where rˉ=(r1,r2,,rk)\bar{r}=(r_{1},r_{2},\ldots,r_{k}). Very recently, Balandraud obtained the minimum cardinality of Σα(A)\Sigma_{\alpha} (A) in finite fields. Motivated by Baladraud's work, we find the minimum cardinality of Σα(A)\Sigma_{\alpha}(A) in the group of integers. We also determine the structure of the finite set AA of integers for which Σα(A)|\Sigma_{\alpha} (A)| is minimal. Furthermore, we generalize these results of subset sums to the subsequence sums Σα(rˉ,A)\Sigma_{\alpha} (\bar{r},\mathcal{A}). As special cases of our results we obtain some already known results for the usual subset and subsequence sums.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.00194,
  title  = {Inverse problems for certain subsequence sums in integers},
  author = {Jagannath Bhanja and Ram Krishna Pandey},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.00194},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

15 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:02:04.889Z